


If any man's hand ever made that land

by noxelementalist



Category: due South
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Dubious Ethics, Hypnotism, M/M, Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-06-27 08:56:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19787545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noxelementalist/pseuds/noxelementalist
Summary: “You hypnotized yourself?!?”





	If any man's hand ever made that land

**Author's Note:**

> This is one I’ve wanted to try to write for a long time, and finally decided to give in. Title from “Hypnotized” by Fleetwood Mac.

_Hour One_

“Fraser?” Ray asked.

“Yes Ray?”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes Ray.”

“You- You _hypnotized_ yourself?!?”

“Yes Ray.”

“Great,” Ray muttered as he slumped back against the consulate door. “Just…great.”

***

In retrospect, Ray Kowalski should’ve known that something was going to go horribly wrong today the minute he walked into Precinct 27 and didn’t see the Mountie there.

Not that Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Benton Fraser was always at the precinct. There were plenty of days when Ray knew he took the morning shift at the Canadian consulate instead. But even Ray had noticed that four out of five times Benton would show up within an hour, running in with that wolf Diefenbaker right on his heels, at least one rambling story about life in the _actual_ middle _of icy-nowhere,_ and a case that would blow any of the traffic reports Ray was working on out of the water. The fifth time he’d show up within three hours.

But today Fraser hadn’t shown up at all. Like, _at all_. Ray hadn’t seen him even once as he worked through files at his desk in the midst of Chicago’s finest hauling people in and out for statements, or heard Diefenbaker bark at the vending machine in the hopes someone would take pity and get him chips. It was an absence that, as a good detective and as Fraser’s partner, had led Ray to the logical conclusion that Benton must be doing something incredibly…stupid and honorable and _Canadian_ somewhere in downtown Chicago, and therefore that the Mountie needed Ray around if he wanted to not die at the hand of something equally stupid.

That thought had Ray heading over to the Canadian consulate at the end of his shift, managing to drive over and park right in front of the consulate where— with a nod to Constable Turnball who was standing guard outside, doing his level best not to break in the face of teasing kids— Ray Kowalski jogged up the front steps. This was followed by him pulling open the heavy oak doors of the diplomatic office and walking up a flight of stairs to where he knew Fraser’s office was. “Fraser, you in here?” he called out as he opened the door to Fraser’s office. “You didn’t show at the precinct, what, you too busy for the boys in blue or something?”

Sure enough, the reply had been stupid and noble and Canadian.

“Of all … _why_ did you hypnotize yourself?” Ray asked again, resisting the urge to try to massage out the migraine developing behind his eyes in favor of glaring at Fraser where he was sitting behind the large oak desk he’d been issued, a dazed look on the Mountie’s face. “Did the Ice Queen finally snap and break her mirror on you?”

“She didn’t snap Ray,” Fraser replied. Ray couldn’t help noticing that Fraser spoke in the same, irritatingly smooth inflecting tones he always did, as if Fraser spent so much of his life in a trance that there was no difference between it and his normal speaking voice. “She told me to try to relax for the next couple days and not to get involved in anything.”

“And so you thought you’d _hypnotize_ yourself for 48 hours?”

“Forty-eight hours is a couple of days, and this _is_ relaxing Ray. You should try it something.”

“Bet you Diefenbaker would agree with me.”

“Diefenbaker chose to go visit a lady friend, and I didn’t ask questions.”

Ray blinked. “The _wolf’s_ got a girlfriend.”

Benton slowly nodded his head. “Yes Ray,” he intoned. “And some pups he’s very proud of that live with their mother Maggie on the other side of town.”

“No kidding?”

“No Ray.”

“That’s- but still, relaxing is sitting at home,” Ray continued, making a note to ask Diefenbaker if he’d like Ray to put a picture of the pups on his desk. He was sure nobody would complain seeing as how they let Mrs. Rodica keep photos of her (really bad-looking) grandkids on hers. “Relaxing is watching a game, eating junk food, maybe even reading something besides a magazine or a case file—”

“There are _rules_ against loitering in the consulate Ray.”

Ray through his hands in the air. “Of course, how silly of me not to know that!” he shouted at the ceiling.

“It is Ray.”

“That’s- hey Frase,”Ray said suddenly. “You know where you could relax?”

“Anywhere Ray.”

“My place,” Ray went on, ignoring Benton. “Yeah, you know what? Come home with me—”

“Yes Ray,” Fraser said, standing up. “When do we leave?”

Ray watched as Benton absently stretching out his hand out to grab his Stetson off the floor where it had fallen off his desk. _Must’ve fallen when he fell asleep,_ Ray thought to himself.

“Now, I guess?” he said aloud.

“Now?”

“Now,” Ray said, watching as Fraser slowly walked past him into the consulate hall.

“I’m going to be babysitting a hypnotized Fraser,” Ray muttered as he followed behind him down the stairs. “I cannot _believe_ this. I- hey Fraser, you know I drove here right?”

“I do now Ray.”

“Good, because when we get out of this place, _we_ are going to hop right into my car, and _you_ are going to tell me in excruciating detail exactly why you decided to learn how to hypnotize anyone in the first place.”

“Yes Ray.”

***

“…and so after realizing that I would have to effectively recreate the entire crime in order to identify which of the five Inuksuk the testimony was referring to, I decide it would be significantly easier and less time consuming if I hypnotized the victim, with permission of course,” Fraser was saying as they slowly approached the door to Ray’s apartment. “This necessitated me learning how to hypnotize someone, and so after conducting some independent research at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College Library, I managed to learn how to use what’s referred to as the relaxation technique, in particular the pendulum variation, to—”

“So basically you self-taught yourself to hypnotize folks for a case, and then used it on yourself for fun, got it,” Ray said as he opened the door. “So when is this wearing off again?”

“Now in approximately forty-seven hours Ray.”

“Great,” Ray muttered to himself as Fraser walked in, closing the door behind him. “Welp, make yourself comfortable.”

“Comfortable?”

“You know, comfortable,” Ray said. “As in, lounging around all casual-like? I’m gonna go change, see if I can dig up something for you to put on. Gotta be something you can wear besides that.”

“Put on?”

“Yes, Fraser, put on,” Ray repeated. “As in, dress in or wear. As in, take off all the officially designated and mandated Mountie-wear and put on the clothes I bring you because for the next forty-seven—”

“Forty-six and—”

“ _Roughly forty-seven_ hours, you are a civilian,” Ray insisted as he walked into his bedroom, just barely hearing Fraser’s “yes Ray” as he went.

_How do I even own these many clothes? I don’t even wear this much stuff,_ Ray thought as he pushed aside the piles of shirts that had somehow slowly been building on the bottom of his closet. _Yep, definitely need to do a laundry day soon_.

It wasn’t long before Ray had changed out of his slacks and shirt into an old pair of pajamas and a beat-up white tank top. It took some more doing, but eventually he was able to find a pair of sweatpants he’d accidentally bought one size too large and an old, touristy t-shirt from the Sears Tower the folks at Precinct 27 had given him as a gag gift when he started that Ray was sure would fit Benton just fine. 

“Okay,” Ray said as he came out of the bedroom closet and walked back towards the front. “I’ve got the- clothes.”

“Are those for me Ray?” Fraser asked him.

Benton was naked.

Benton Fraser was _naked._

Benton Fraser, _Ray’s partner in crime-fighting_ , was standing _naked_ in Ray’s living room.

“Ray?”

“Ah-yeah,” Ray stammered, all but throwing the clothes at him, hearing more than seeing when Benton didn’t put out a hand to grab them, the fabric smacking the Mountie’s chest before falling in dull thud onto the floor. “Here.”

“Thank you Ray,” Benton said, bending over to pick up the clothes from the ground.

“You’re welcome,” Ray said absentmindedly.

The thing was, Ray thought to himself as he watched Benton get dressed, it wasn’t like Ray hadn’t… _noticed_ the way Fraser looked. It was pretty much impossible not to: the guy was surrounded by women ogling him all the time, and Ray had even noticed a few of the guys Huey and Gardino had pulled in for police questioning a few days back looking over the detectives’ shoulders to eye the Mountie as he passed by. The way Ray figured it, the only way Benton Fraser could possibly be goggled at more was if he was a CBS show actor or if Francesca somehow got his picture uploaded to Usenet.

And it wasn’t like Ray was unaware of the fact that he, Ray Kowalski (really Stanley Kowalski, but when nobody but your ex-wife called you by your birth name, it was time to accept you have a different name) would notice that kind of thing. Sure, he and Stella had gotten married young, but there had been a few years in there when they weren’t married, weren’t even a couple, and while Ray had been completely, _really_ okay with her probably seeing folks that weren’t him, he hadn’t been so okay with it that Ray hadn’t taken the opportunity to try a few folks himself. He tried women, but Ray found they couldn’t compare to Stella, and he got really tired of flirting with women he knew wouldn’t live up to the standard of the girl he once wet himself to help get out of a bank robbery.

Then Ray had tried men. He’d been more successful with that, seeing as how Stella wasn’t a guy. It had meant getting _way more_ familiar with Boystown than anybody who wasn’t living there probably should, but it hadn’t…been off-putting. Not what Ray figured he’d wanted at the time, but not off-putting. He could see doing a thing with a guy again. Not that Ray _had_ , but it _was_.

So while Benton slowly dragged the heavy, cottony sweatpants over thighs that were thicker with muscle than Ray had realized they’d be, Ray found himself feeling a sudden mixture of relief and giddiness. Relief, because if all it had taken to strip what was apparently a very attractive, madly _built_ Royal Canadian Mountie was a command to take his clothes off, then Fraser would’ve gotten into more trouble than either of them could’ve handled from hanging around the consulate the moment someone (probably Francesca) figured out they could do that. Giddiness, because a Benton Fraser who apparently took _every_ command, explicitly given or not, as an _actual_ command was spending the next couple of days living with him, and that- that hit a few temptations Ray hadn’t known he still _had_ in him given the dry spell he admittedly had found himself in since Stella had divorced him.

“How do I look Ray?” Benton asked smoothly.

“You look good Frase,” Ray stated, hoping his voice had come out just as even.

“What now Ray?”

“Now,” Ray said, flopping down onto the couch in his living room, “now, we relax.”

_Hour Six_

“Fraser.”

“Ray?”

“Will you put the book down?”

“Why Ray?”

“You’ve read it already.”

“I know Ray.”

“Fraser, you’ve already read all the Tennessee Williams I’ve got _three times_ ,” Ray insisted, leaning over the edge of the couch to try and pull his copy of _Sweet Bird of Youth_ out of the other man’s hand from where he’d laid down.

“I know Ray,” Benton said, his hand not releasing the book no matter how Ray tugged on it.

_Sheesh he’s got a grip._ “Why don’t you read something else?” Ray asked him.

“I like Tennessee Williams. He’s an excellent dramatist, his works are very revealing of American culture, and he’s the source of your birth namesake.”

“Yes, and I appreciate that, but that doesn’t mean you can’t read someone else.”

Benton blinked, a facial tick that Ray swore was the first one he had made since they’d arrived (at least, that Ray had seen). “What else would you like me to read Ray?”

“I dunno, what do you _like_ to read?”

“Many things Ray,” the other man replied without hesitation. “You see, my grandparents were traveling librarians, and—”

“Okay, try reading this,” Ray interrupted, managing at last to pull the book out of Fraser’s hand and replace it with _Interview with the Vampire_. “

“Yes Ray.”

“And if you like it, there’s a movie version that came out a couple of years back, I’ll go see if I can get a copy of it from Blockbuster’s tomorrow or something.”

“Yes Ray.”

_Hour Twelve_

“It’s time to go to bed Fraser.”

“Yes Ray.”

Ray sighed. After having watched Fraser devour all his Tennessee Williams and Anne Rice books— and liking Lestat a little more than Ray was comfortable with, sheesh, was Louis _really_ that bad— Ray had managed to distract Benton with cable news followed by a couple of hockey games, during one of which Ray managed to cook dinner for the two of them.

Dinner was the only time Ray felt glad the other man was hypnotized. Benton being out of it meant the two of them could just eat and watch the game instead of having Fraser give Ray an in-depth critique of Ray’s cooking skills that would’ve been heavily seasoned with all the “ahs” and “oh dears” that Ray knew was Fraser trying not to cuss.

Even though Ray knew his steak was perfect since only heathens cooked it to jerky well done.

“Do you need instructions regarding _how_ to go to bed?” Ray asked Fraser, who was still lying down on the couch, the same couch he’d been variously sitting or spread out on from the moment they’d gotten in. Well, except for one bathroom trip, something Ray had been happy to discover he _didn’t_ need to order Fraser to remember to take.

“Do you think I need them?” Benton responded.

“Depends,” Ray said carefully. “Do you intend to lie on that couch with your eyes open in a light trance all night?”

“Yes Ray.”

“Then you do need instructions.”

“I do?”

“Yes, you do,” Ray grumbled, trying to figure out what combination of commands would go best.

“Then I suppose I do.”

_Well, here goes,_ Ray thought to himself. “Fraser, it is now ten o’clock,” Ray said carefully.

“Yes Ray.”

“Within the next thirty minutes, I am going to grab a series of pillows and blankets from that closet,” he went on, gesturing towards the hall closet that was in front of Ray’s bedroom. “I will bring them to you, at which point you will arrange said pillows and blankets around your person in such a way that you will feel really relaxed and physically at ease lying down on that couch.”

“Yes Ray.”

“Once you have done that,” Ray continued, “you will then change your clothes into whatever it is you would feel most physically restful sleeping in, lie down in the middle of the aforementioned pillow-blanket arrangement, close your eyes, and sleep for ten hours. When you wake up, you will make yourself breakfast using what is in the kitchen, eat breakfast, and undergo whatever your general morning routine is.

“Yes Ray.”

_I feel like I’m my old Academy drill sergeant,_ Ray thought. “During the time you are sleeping, I will be sleeping. I will likely awake at some point during your morning routine, and we’ll pick up from there,” Ray concluded.

“Yes Ray.”

“Any questions?”

“No.”

“Good. In that case, I’m off to get you pillows.”

_Hour Twenty-Two_

It turned out that taking care of your entranced coworker was the kind of full-time gig that could wear a grown man out, because for the first time in a long time Ray had slept solidly for what the blinking red clock in the room informed him was about ten hours.

“Hmm,” Ray mumbled, groaning as he slowly pushed his body off the bed, his feet padding dully against the floor as he started heading down the hall towards the living room. “Something smells like bacon.”

“Good morning Ray,” Fraser said as Ray walked into the kitchen.

Ray glanced up and saw Fraser dressed in the same clothes as he’d given him, standing in front of the apartment kitchen’s stove as he cooked bacon off a skillet on the stove. _Guess that explains where the smell came from._ “Morning Fraser, that smells go-od,” Ray said aloud, finishing lamely when he saw the jars that rested on kitchen table. Mason jars, which Ray hadn’t even known he owned. “Fraser, why are there _pounds of_ —”

“It’s Sunday Ray,” Benton said. “On Sundays I attempt to prepare as much food in advance for the rest of the week, in order to save valuable time necessary for my enforcement duties. However, as I am currently outside of the consulate and have no ability to restore my own stocks, the only way for me to undergo my morning routine was to restore your clearly emptied food reserves, which you have negligently allowed to reach catastrophic low levels.”

“They are not—”

“Then of course it occurred to me that it was only fair, as your guest, that I make you breakfast, which while not technically part of my usual morning routine is an acceptable alteration.”

“There is more homemade jam and syrup on this table than I ever eat.”

“You should be healthier in your food choices.”

Ray sighed. “Just, serve me the bacon and go take a shower Yukon-boy,” he grumbled. “And change out of those clothes, will you?”

“Yes, Ray,” Fraser said, carefully turning the stove off and transferring the bacon onto a plate that he put onto the table, gently shoving aside a few jars to make space for the food. He had no sooner placed it on the table before Benton had placed the skillet onto the stovetop and leaving the kitchen. Only a few moments later the sound of the shower turning on could be heard.

“This had better taste really good,” Ray muttered to the otherwise empty kitchen table as he bit into a slice of bacon. “Seeing as how I got to figure out where to put all this other stuff.”

Thankfully, it was.

_Well, what do you know?_ Ray thought as he ate contentedly. _Guess he wasn’t kidding about being able to cook in his sleep._

Ray had just finished the plate when he heard a knock on the door.

“Coming!” he shouted, pushing his chair back and walking over to the door.

“You better!” a voice replied back.

Ray winced before hurriedly plastering a smile onto his face. “Mrs. Glendora, what a lovely surprise.”

“Good morning, neighbor,” Mrs. Glendora replied warmly, in a thick Irish accent. “Ray, I wanted to stop by and invite you once again to come today to the Saint Andrew‘s United Church of Christ Sunday Social.”

“I’m not sure if I can get the time off,” Ray lied easily.

“I know you missed the last couple dear, but I’m sure Chicago’s finest can spare you for a couple of hours just the once.”

“Oh, that’s really—”

“Besides, I know Astraea and Tara are both really looking forward to seeing you again. They still talk about how lovely you were at the Christmas party last year.”

Ray chuckled, resisting the urge to twitch at the mention of the two (very over-eager) young women. Ray had spent an hour trying and failing to escape the pair politely the winter before, which was not coincidentally the last time he’d gone to the social. “I’m sure they are, but—”

“Ray, you appear to be out of clean clothes,” Benton said suddenly, his voice sounding far closer to Ray than someone who was calling from the shower should’ve been. “Any idea of where I could find something to wear?”

Ray watched Mrs. Glendora’s eyes widened.

_Oh please. Please. Please don’t let him- oh, yep, here he is,_ Ray thought as he turned around to see Benton had come out of the shower and was standing behind him wrapped in one of Ray’s blue towels. Somehow it seemed much smaller around his waist than it ever was on Ray, which Ray quickly realized was because Fraser had wrapped the towel around him length-wise, for some reason.

“There’s some on the top shelf, far right corner, in the bedroom closet,” Ray told him.

“Excellent,” Fraser replied, before turning turned around and heading back to the bedroom, leaving Ray to turn and face his neighbor.

“Mrs. Glendora—”

“I can understand why you’d want to skip the social,” she said, looking at Ray with amusement. “I would too if I had my own personal Jamie Fraser all alone in my—”

“I’m glad you understand,” Ray interrupted, feeling himself flush.

“Oh Ray, darling, please,” Mrs. Glendora said. “I’m not one of _those_ people you know.”

“I…know now?”

Mrs. Glendora smiled. “Well, in any case,” she went on, “if you two feel like coming up for air sometime tonight, the social’s at eight.”

“Right. Right, thank you, again,” Ray replied.

“Oh no, please, thank _you,”_ Mrs. Glendora said. “This has been the most exciting morning I’ve had since my old roommate Elsie decided she was going to move to Chelsea!”

“Glad to be of entertainment!” Ray called after her as she walked down the hall, closing the door shortly thereafter.

“I’m dressed now Ray,” Benton said, prompting Ray to turn around and see Benton had put on a pair of old plaid pajamas and a Police Academy Trainee shirt that had somehow remained since Ray’s training days and that stretched tightly across Benton’s chest.

“Fraser, you know what? Take the shirt off,” Ray told him, sighing internally. “I’m going to do laundry, and then I’ll find you something that’ll fit better than that.”

“Yes, Ray,” Benton said, practically peeling the shirt off.

“In the meantime, you just…do something indoors here, ‘cause I’m thinking I’m going to be doing laundry around all day.”

“May I read—”

“Yes, Fraser, you can read- actually, you know what?” Ray said, interrupting himself as he remembered what Mrs. Glendora had said. “Try out my Diana Galbadon stuff. Start with Outlander.”

“Yes Ray.”

_Hour Thirty_

Ray tried to imagine what someone like Francesca would’ve said at the sight of them. Here Ray was: a blonde, spiky-hair guy in a pair of boxers and a white tank that was obviously the only thing that several loads of laundering to go had left for him to wear. Here was Fraser, a brunette with flawlessly styled (and remarkably resilient, sheesh, how much gel did Fraser _use_ anyway) hair, dressed only in a pair of pajamas.

There they were, sprawled out on a living room couch with Twizzlers, popcorn, training light colored eyes on a TV screen to watch a blonde Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fake bad Southern accents in a vampire movie.

He figured she’d probably have thrown her hands up in the air in dismay at them until she saw that _Interview with a Vampire_ was sharing space with _To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar_ and _Batman Forever_ in the Blockbuster rental pile on the living room table. Then she’d have freaked out at them about being total losers.

Ray smiled at the thought.

“Good movie, huh Frase?”

“Yes Ray,” Benton replied to him tonelessly.

“What do you think of them?” Ray asked, gesturing with a Twizzler at the screen.

“I think the movie is attempting to present them as a dysfunctional couple, but I have serious questions regarding both the accuracy of the portrayal as well as their attempts at a Southern Creole, as both seem to have confused the dialect’s French origins with Spanish ones.”

“Yeah that- wait, you question the _accuracy_ of their relationship? They’re vampires!”

“While I have no experience with individuals suffering from Renfield’s syndrome, my intimate relationships with men in the past suggest to me that—”

“In the past?” Ray interrupted, surprised. “You’ve dated a man before?”

“Yes Ray.”

“You.”

“Yes Ray.”

“You’ve dated somebody before.”

“Multiple persons.”

“Including a man.”

“Yes Ray.”

“What- what _exactly_ do you mean by you’ve dated a man before?”

“I mean I have dated a man before Ray.”

Ray looked at Benton. “Who did you- when did- and where was _I_ when this was going down?”

“Mark Smithbauer. When we were thirteen. You were likely somewhere in Chicago with Stella at the time.”

“Oh,” Ray said simply. “What was that like?”

“It was good,” Benton said, his even voice sounding strange against the sound of new vampire Louis and Lestat arguing about the ethical necessity of killing humans for blood. “I was the librarian’s grandchild with good grades, and he was an Inuvik teenager with a tight grip that could drive a hockey puck eight feet into the curves of a snowbank. We’d play behind his father’s barn until it got dark, then he’d turn on his father’s tractor and we played until my grandmother called me home.”

Ray wasn’t sure how much of that was innuendo and how much of that actual fact.

“Sometimes we’d only play a little bit though,” Benton continued. “He was always very attentive about that. Just enough not to get me into trouble you understand. Instead on those days he’d wrap his arms around, pull me against him onto the snow, and—”

“Wow, okay, I- guess you _have_ had a relationship with a man before.” Ray interrupted. “I, ah, hope he didn’t break your heart the last time you saw him all those years ago or anything?”

“I was despondent for weeks after he and his father left for the city so Mark could play in one of the better hockey schools,” Benton admitted. “But I wasn’t going to stand in his way to become a professional hockey player, and we both knew he had to go.”

“Oh.”

“The last time I saw him though was just a couple of years ago. I saved his life from a bookie that wanted to kill him for reneging on a fixed match, and Mark received a lifetime ban from playing professional hockey. We played a little before he left, but he did, and I stayed.”

“That…sounds about as epic as me and Stella were,” Ray mumbled.

“It was.”

“And nobody commented on it?”

“No, Ray,” Benton said. “While the influence of the Catholic Church in the majority of the northern Inuit territories has meant an increase of negativity and rejection for such relationships, Inuvik was both small enough and remote enough that the majority of such opinions were not voiced as it was necessary for everyone to work together to survive.”

“Ah.”

“Also, it was relatively commonplace for the Inuit teenagers of the towns to go on hunts, which historically have developed a reputation for allowing for such pairings. Although as my grandmother banned me from going on such hunts until my mentor Thomas Quinn convinced her that a limited and carefully structured hunting instruction would be acceptable, I was never able to ascertain how well developed such a reputation was.”

Ray blinked, trying to parse what Benton had said. “I guess getting a date must’ve been hard, huh?”

“Not with Mark around.”

“Right. Right. I, ah, I’ve also, been with guys like that, before,” Ray admitted quietly to Benton. “Before me and Stella get together. It wasn’t bad.”

“No Ray.”

“I might even be up for trying it again, if I had the right partner.”

“I’m your partner Ray.”

“Not like that, I mean, I wouldn’t- I- ah, okay Frase?”

“Yes Ray?”

“What I’m about to say, let’s just- let’s deal with it when this whole trance thing is finished okay?”

“Yes Ray.”

“I wouldn’t mind you being my partner- my, my _personal_ partner, if that was something you’d be interested in,” Ray said hurriedly. “You wouldn’t be up for that would you?”

“I would Ray, but aren’t we supposed to be waiting to deal with that in approximately 18 hours?”

Ray sighed. “Yeah,” Ray said. “Yeah, let’s just…watch all these movies and head to bed.”

“Yes Ray.”

_Hour Forty-Eight_

Ray woke up suddenly to the smell of something toasting.

“ _No_ ,” Ray muttered, just barely seeing his clock reading eleven a.m. as he ran out into the kitchen in a panic. “Please no.”

“Good Morning Ray,” Benton said loudly as Ray came into sight. He was sitting at the kitchen table in his red mountie’s uniform, a piece of toast with jam on his plate. At his feet sat Diefenbaker, the wolf glancing up at Ray with what the man was almost willing to call an expectant look. “Sleep well?”

“Oh thank- is it over?”

“If you mean my 48-hour hypnosis imposed time off, then yes.”

“Good,” Ray said firmly, walking past Benton to open the refrigerator. “Never do that again.”

“Ray?”

“I mean, yes, it was great having you over, but _never do that again.”_

_“_ Right,” Fraser said. “Um, Ray?”

“Yeah Frase?”

“You do know that, as you never asked me to forget anything, I remember the whole time?”

Ray froze where he stood. He could feel his fingers, which had just wrapped around the half gallon carton of the milk, clench the cardboard the carton was made out of. “I…do now?”

“Will be that a problem?”

“No.”

“Excellent,” Benton said. “Then I look forward to continuing our discussion about the personal nature of our relationship after breakfast on our way in back to work- Turnball, I am happy to report, managed to inform Precinct 92 of you taking leave, and so you should be able to resume your duties without too much consequence.”

Diefenbaker barked.

“Oh, and Diefenbaker wishes to speak with you,” Benton continued, sounding almost sheepish.

“About what?”

Ray asked, looking at the wolf, who stared at back at him with barely an ear twitch.

“It seems in absence of my parents he has taken it upon himself to…set conditions.”

Ray felt himself grin. “Dief came all the way over from his ex’s to give me a shovel talk?”

“I, ah, think it’s more he’d like to confirm your ability to provide for me,” Fraser muttered.

“Oh, you mean feed you?” Ray asked. “Well, in that case, I’ll cook him and me some breakfast, and we’ll negotiate your curfew.”

Diefenbaker barked again, smacking a paw against the floor.

“I do not turn into a pumpkin at midnight!” Benton told the wolf.

Ray laughed. “Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of Fraser,” Ray told Diefenbaker. “I mean, I managed it for the last two days.”

“Ray, if we start a relationship, it will last longer than two days.”

“Well _duh_ , but so far I think I’ve done good!”

Benton smiled. “You have Ray,” he said. “You have.”


End file.
